The Xbox 360 has an optional goal of locating 45 lambda (inverted Y) symbols in the game. Traditionally, these symbols were markers used in the first Half-life to mark supply caches as Dr. Freeman escaped the wreckage of Black Mesa. He could also spray paint the symbol on the PC version to mark his path. In Half-life 2, the Black Mesa’s Delta Lab guys are now the non-fall of man
resistance and will use the symbol to mark their territory.

Dr. Freeman gets the Lambda credit when he nears a marker (very few) or breaks the supply boxes placed at the marker. Since each location can only be applied once per gametag, if you miss a marker the first time, you will not need to get the marker any subsequent playthroughs.

The caches for Episode 2 are also included at the bottom of this guide as a hot bitch bonus, just like Orange Box’s Portal.

Red Letter Day Chapter 2

1 – The only marker is the one outside Isaac Kleiner’s lab, where Alyx punches the soda machine slash secret entrance. This is one of the two only “sight-only” markers.

Route Kanal – Chapter 3

2 – You should have picked up the pistol (when starting a new game on Red Letter Day). After hopping the train to escape enemies (this is not the train-yard but the sheer pit that has two walkways running adjacent lengthwise to the train tracks), there is a wrecked house you pass through to leave the trainyard area. A box is by a wall with the marker.

4 – Look in the red car after blasting the platform with the Overwatch emplaced pulse gun turret.

5 – After evading the chopper, Freeman will be in the sewers with barnacles. There’s a ladder before that leads down to this cache.

6 – After getting the submachinegun in the sewer tunnel with large pipe (and the initial encounters with hacks), drop down at the exit for the cache.

7 – There is a large round silo structure underground just before the first radiation pool (you only see it as a half-column); the middle level on the half-silo’s side leads to the cache.

8 – At the first radiative waste pool, inspect the sides.

Water Hazard

9 – After the new chapter starts, the first instance of fresh water (basically after the first drop), hints at a cache. The 50 Ohm setting on simalcrum’s RF modulator pretty much wiped out the symbol the first time through.

10 – The supply cache at the red barn (station 12). Drop it in by wrecking the wood bar jamming the pulley wheel (in the barn’s attic).

11 – After floating the ramp with the blue containers and hopping the obstruction, there is a pipe near the first dropship that is suspiciously open. Use barrels to reach this cache.

12 – After blasting the first (make-shift) Overwatch gate (this is the one you blow a barrel to door ram the gate open), check the bridge the second rocket-firing Overwatch APC is parked on. The cache will have an ambsuh — when you come back out, two Overwatch will fast rope and attack at the gate exit.

13 – After escaping the rocket-firing APCs and wall of fire, the game will load a new section of map. After the loading point, look for a cache hanging from the ceiling. Bring it down by removing the concrete 8-blocks from the counterweight basket. The marker is on a column near the basket with the supplies.

14 – Go past the gate labelled “Gate 5″ and go right where the scuttled ships form a blockade (you should pick up a .357 Magnum from the Overwatch station at Gate 5). Check under the metal bridge with the train atop it. The cache is near the spot where the chopper starts hounding your boat with bombs.

15 – The chopper will temporarily stop attacking with bombs once your boat reaches some short tunnel sections (all broken up so a stray bomb can surprise your M.I.T. ass). A square sewer room after these short sections will have “669E B ARN 6″ stenciled on the wall; check that room for the stash. The boxes can be brought to your level by destroying the wood pylons with the catamaran.

16 – When the chopper resumes chasing your boat, you will find a short section of overhead roads that cross perpendicularly to the canal; these obstruct the chopper and forces it to drop bombs. Immediately after this section, you will find the boat in a Terminator 2-like aqueduct (where the T-1000 is trying run down the wiener John Connor with the Governator chasing ’em both on a
motorcycle). There is some green grafitti on the left side of the aqueduct that marks the supply cache. Since the chopper will be around, make sure to sprint out and back to the boat. Remember you can just shoot the box (or use a grenade) to break it for the achievement marker.

17 – With the chopper chasing your boat, stop when two Overwatch guards rappel down. Check the area before the Overwatch “fast-rope” down. You should find a Host-like sewer structure (watch the movie) for the cache. Other words to describe this structure: drain sluice, sewer anus, waste water aqueduct.

18 – After getting the pulse gun welded onto the boat, you come onto a fork in the canal. Take the right fork to a dead end inhabited by Overwatch and zombie head crabs. The cache is in the make-shift Resistance patrol tower.

Black Mesa East

19 – Outside Dr. Vance’s lab. Check the lab’s dock at the waterline.

Ravenholm

20 – When trying to get over the electric fence, you enter the power plant building past the large bonfire in the street. The power plant building has an airduct atop one of the generators leading to the cache.

21 – At the car traps, jump over the fence and get the supplies using the second car as the launch point.

22 – After meeting Father Grigori (and where he tells you his name), there is a large street with zombies (they not infinite) and a long ladder to the exit. Don’t leave for the exit until you check the rooftops for a hidden attic with the cache.

Highway 17

24 – You should have the dune buggy and get dropped onto the beach. After locating the road, stop before entering the first tunnel. Check the cabin outpost for a cache.

25 – Check the first house along the highway; this is the house with the neuro-tox headcrab zombie and the first thumper you see in the game.

26 – After using the crane to move the buggy to the next section of highway, a Combine bug gunship makes an appearance. There is a rocket crate in a wrecked mini-van to supply Freeman with the ammo to waste it. Drive past the mini-van with the rocket crate and find a blue car. That marks the stash (it is just off the road).

27 – At the first Overwatch wall (where the crossbow is found), there is a small area walling off a generator with the stash. Carry a drum or large box to the break in the fence to get inside.

28 – Before going under (and through) the large metal truss trainbridge, you stop at an Overwatch held farm with headcrabs and a windmill. The truss bridge is where you need to use the buggy’s turbo to 2Fast-2Furious the oncoming Combine armored freight train (and swerve left to escape) once you disable the Overwatch forcefield on the otherside. From the farm’s windmill, go across the
dirt road leading to the bridge head and locate a fenced off storage area (it is in shadow, so it may be pretty dark on your screen) with a variety of headcrabs (neuro-tox and normal). Smash everything for the cache. Grenades work in getting rid of the monsters and nabbing the marker credit.

Sandtraps

29 – At the junk gate opened by three car batteries. The house with the battery receptacle has a small bathroom. Look in the crawlspace above the bathroom (this means you should be in the house’s main room, not the bathroom) and pick up any of the items for the cache to register. If you need to, you can use a hand grenade to blast some of the items out of there so you can grab them. (Jason Maurer) On Sand Traps, you come to a gate that must be opened by placing the batteries into a machine. To the right of this machine is a bathroom. If you look up on top of the bathroom there is a little area with just enough room for some hidden items and that legendary orange logo. Use your grav gun to pull the items out.

30 – The switch to turn on the thumper is in a shanty town. On the beach (true). By the docks (fake). At 8 o’clock (fake). In Pasedena (fake). Locate the stash at the very top shack, or opt to break the box with an SMG grenade (you can do the weapon code and refill the ammo). Note you will have left the dune buggy at the Resistance lighthouse camp some time ago.

Nova Prospekt

31 – In prison block A-5, there is a two-level checkboard floor area covered by two Overwatch turrets (no relation to Aperture Science turrets — except in shitty center of gravity design). Break the board in the window; it’s clearly marked if you slow the hell down and explore the prison and scour the place.

32 – After solving the puzzle to get past the first Overwatch forcefield (and having the Pheropod back in action once more), you should have access to the prison cells. You need to visit the cells before meeting the spinning fan — head to the prison cells’ second level. Locate the marked cell and open “sez simalcrum” using the gravity gun’s push mode.

33 – In the prison laundryroom (large room that’s white with Silent Hill washing machines), locate a small maintenance passage on the lowest level leading to a cache. Beware the neuro-tox enemies in the hallway; an Overwatch will spawn in the laundry room if you head into the side tunnel.

Entanglement

34 – After talking to Alyx (in person) and Eli (on vid-screen), you will be let into the main facility by Alyx (she will remotely open a gate). Immediately head left past the gate and locate the cache above the Dr. Breen’s Private Reserve soda machine. Add Aeon Flux’s bad game mechanics, and this
game will be more awesome than not.

Anti-Citizen One

35 – After DOG drops down at the start of this chapter, Freeman heads out into a loading dock where you find a section of road jammed between the building (to your left) and a City Destroyer (to your right). There are two green dumpsters and a larger blue dumpster adjacent to a raised section of ground that is basically right up against the City Destroyer. Stack a box or something atop the dumpsters (less complex than Portal, you cake-brain) and grab the cache sitting atop the raised area. Yoink.

36 – Locate the hole from the train station street (where the game started) that drops down to a hopper-laden (landmine) area. Shortly afterwards, there is a large street with a Strider (cinematic – you don’t fight it) and then an alleyway that has a small hut with two inert hoppers. A small shack across from the hut with the inert mines is the cache. Shoot the explosive barrel to reveal the entrance.

37 – During some house to house fighting, you will find a basement with three Overwatch gun turrets (the GLaDOS portable kind) and a hole leading to some stairs (optional) and a hallway (way forward). Go up the stairs to the streets to a side area — you will be between two City Destroyer walls — grab or break the boxes from the cache on the street.

38 – In the tunnel where hordes of hack-bots are swarming, get past the blockage mid-tunnel then double back (in the second section) to the dead end. The bonfire hides the cache symbol — the glare from the fire matches the yellow marker almost perfectly.

39 – At the Resistance building where you lower the metal pedestrian bridge (this is the second metal bridge encountered). If you are at the one bridge that is lowered by the Resistance guy, you are at the first bridge (you first see that first bridge from the ground, and the resistance guys raise it to stop the Overwatch assault). Go past that first metal bridge into a series of holes in the floor populated with headcrabs and a zombie. Once you hit rock bottom — like Homer Simpson grabbing gummi from a coed’s sweet can — Freeman and company start heading up through broken floors to a second metal bridge. The room just before you lower the second metal bridge is the spot with the
cache.

40 – In the building with the barnacles (basically a little bit from the previous location), drop down to the lowest level, blast the Overwatch, and locate the stairs going up. To the right of those stairs going onwards is a hallway that needs the gravity gun (or pistol if you are full of items) to break the cache. Note that going up the stairs to load the map means you went too far.

41 – After Alyx orders Freeman to go underground in the large break in the street, you come to a vertical shaft of some sort. Fight off Overwatch and zombie, then head to the bottom. There should be a marker indicating the cache. Just watch for the bottomless pit.

42 – Shortly after the vertical shaft, there is a large sewer tunnel with zombies, headcrabs and Overwatch fighting. Drop to the lowest level of the sewer tunnel and go foward until you encounter the neuro-tox headcrab zombie. Kill it and look for a narrow part of the tunnels. There is a small square hole in the side of the narrow spot with the cache. Gravity gun your gear. Note if you are at the moving platform and its control box, you went the wrong way.

43 – Continue in the lower tunnel with the neuro-tox headcrab zombie. Hop over the motionless pistons and zap the boxes near the marker for another cache. Note if you are at the moving platform and its control box, you went the wrong way.

44 – In the large room with the moving platform and the 8 billion Overwatch soldiers blocking your progress, look for a red container on the upper level of the warehouse. Follow the narrow walkway hemming this container to the cache.

Follow Freeman

45 – After leaving the strider-filled plaza, Freeman will be chased by a single strider down a tunnel to an apartment building. The cache is next to the infinite rocket ammo chest in that building’s upper floor and is very much on the way, just like marker 39.

Our Benefactors – and the rest of this hoss’shit

There are no more caches beyond the spot where you drop down to start “Our Benefactors”. All the 45 caches are before that, so if you missed any, you need to go back (via chapter select). Note that your gamertag saves the achievement progress, so you can use successive new games to get everything done and accounted for. Thanks go to:

Since the supression field is down, these guys will now be able to breed with their choice of lady-mate, at least once per month. For some of you, this is a lot less sex; for those dedicated to Half-life, much, much more.

Web Caches – Episode 2

There are 9 web caches in Half-life 2, Episode 2, Manchester United 0, Liverpool 3 …. haha. That are spread across two chapters (White Forest and Vortal Coil). The 5 radar caches are easier than the web caches since your car’s radar will tell you almost exactly where to find them. No worries on
that. You should instead concern yourself more in finding out how to launch the gnome into space and beating Episode 1 with just one bullet.

Web Cache 1 – In “To The White Forest”, Freeman will be alone in the dark mines once he grabs a crowbar. He will pick up a shotgun, blast some acid ants, and come across a shallow pool populated by ant lion grubs, acid ants, and ant lions. A second pool will be deep enough for Freeman to diver under a submerged tunnel to reach the other side (and see a drowning ant lion). Before encountering Drowny the Ant Lion, the deep pool has an underwater web cache you can break using any attack.

Web Cache 2 – The rest of the caches are in Vortal Coil. You should have survived the Starship Poopers scene and have the Vortigaunt as your partner. The first room encountered past the shutter with acid ants has a web cache and is right at the entrance to it.

Web Cache 3 – The rest of the caches are in Vortal Coil. After going through the acid ant room past the shutter, the vortigaunt may something about acid ants and their rock spray; basically one cache is at the entrance of the room, the next one (this one described) is at its exit.

Web Cache 4 – The rest of the caches are in Vortal Coil. After the acid ant room past the shutter, there is a long tunnel leading to the man-made section of the mines. This cache is in the ceiling at the entrance of that long tunnel and unlike the cache at the exit, there is no live grenade from this cache.

Web Cache 5 – The rest of the caches are in Vortal Coil. After the acid ant room past the shutter, there is a long tunnel leading to the man-made section of the mines. This cache is in the ceiling at the exit of that long tunnel and unlike the cache at the entrance, drops a live grenade once the cache’s web is broken. You may also hear the vortigaunt say something about the acid ants being more aggressive because their grubs have been destroyed.

Web Cache 6 – The rest of the caches are in Vortal Coil and in the large elevator room after evading the Ant Lion guardian. This one is in the wall. On entering this room, check the wall adjacent to the room entrance.

Web Cache 7 – The rest of the caches are in Vortal Coil and in the large elevator room after evading the Ant Lion guardian. This one is in the wall, near an old water boiler.

Web Cache 8 – The rest of the caches are in Vortal Coil and in the large elevator room after evading the Ant Lion guardian. This one is in the ceiling above the spare gear. The spare gear is used to repair the elevator motor.

Web Cache 9 – The rest of the caches are in Vortal Coil and in the large elevator room after evading the Ant Lion guardian. This one is in the ceiling above the mine cart tracks.

Dave created Xboxer360.com back in 2008 and now runs it alongside Rich. Dave also works for several companies within the gaming industry and he was once told to leave a Mumford & Sons gig by Mumford & Sons.

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This is a great guide best one i have seen so far only having pics could make it better god job.

BlackliteWrath

VERY good guide. I was always missing at least ten of these things.

Thanks so much!

DENger

Good article, has helped. Thanks

Albetmachine

The Other Hard Achievements in HL2

Beating Episode 1 with just one bullet is interesting to do, the only bullet your suppose to fire is on the chapter Low Life to unlock a gate with a lock over it. Constant saving is recommended

Launching the gnome into space, or Little Rocket Man is a pain of an achievement to get, I still need to get it but the requirement of it will annoy the hell out of you. The gnome is around the beginning of the first chapter “To The White Forest” in the room where Alyx communicates with Eli, Dr. Kleiner, and Magnusson under one of the lower platforms. Have fun carrying it across most of the game to place it in the rocket on the chapter "Our Mutual Friend" that is about 5-6 chapters away

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